The Toss of a Lemon (36 page)

“They’re coming here?”

“It seems so.”

Sivakami is not sure what to feel. “That’s wonderful,” she says. Why had Thangam not written to let her know? “Isn’t it?”

“Yes. Certainly. Wonderful,” Muchami echoes.

Despite her gladness at the news, Sivakami feels annoyance with Thangam for the first time she can remember. Wasn’t she raised to have better manners than this?

“I wonder how much he tells Thangam about where they are moving to, each time,” Muchami says.

“You knew what I was thinking.”

“I suspect she doesn’t get much warning or information.”

“You’re probably right.”

“And we can’t count on him to let us know.”

“No,” she agrees.

“You have her most recent address, right? I was thinking. Could you spare me for a week or two? Vairum is more than capable of handling the tenants now, and I could get a couple of my nephews to cover the milking, driving, whatever, heavy chores. I’d like you to write to Thangam-kutti and ask if she needs help with moving here. The baby is only one, and the boy is rowdy, I’m sure, a boy.”

Sivakami feels moved at his use of the diminutive in reference to Thangam—Muchami doesn’t have children of his own. He should, she thinks with sudden fervour.

“Yes, yes. You must go. I won’t ask, I will tell her you are coming. Good?”

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN INEVITABLE that Goli would eventually get a posting in Kulithalai; Sivakami has no way of telling what the likelihood was. Thangam and Goli, put up so nearby, with the youngest grandchildren! For two years. And with Vairum and Vani home—what a luxury, in these modern times, to have her family gathered about her. These years will be happy ones. Who knows: they might even see another grandchild born to this household, a son of her son.

Goli eventually manages to visit his mother-in-law and drink a cup of coffee, at which time Sivakami lets him know that they will have Muchami’s assistance with the move. Goli receives the news as though it is a confirmation of something they had already arranged.

Now Muchami brings Thangam and the babies from the train station to Sivakami’s house. Thangam greets her mother, as well as Vairum and Vani and her elder daughters, who act shy for a moment then grab their little brother by his hands and drag him into the courtyard, promising to show him a couple of crickets they have trapped with Muchami’s help. Thangam looks wan and worn, and Vairum asks his mother for a glass of water as he tells Thangam to sit.

“I hope the journey was not too taxing, Akka,” he says, and takes the water from Sivakami to give to Thangam himself.

“No, no,” his sister assures him, drinking the water and smiling as though to show she’s drinking only because he told her to.

He has been squatting and looking at her. Rising, he says, “I’ll go with Muchami to unload your things. Where’s your husband? Leaving his work to others as always?” He exits the front door.

The littlest girl, Sita, lying in her lap, yanks violently on her mother’s thirumangalyam. It has to hurt, but Thangam, mortified, sits as though frozen, the water a lump in her throat.

Vairum and Muchami ride in silence on the front seat of the cart, while Mari and one of Muchami’s nephews ride in back with the trunks. During Vairum’s years at college, his relationship with Muchami has changed in ways now cemented by his return. As a child, he took Muchami almost as much for granted as he would a parent, and Muchami filled a number of parental functions, including those of play-mate, protector and—when Vairum acquired some responsibilities for the family lands—educator. With the latter shift, Vairum began to act wary around the servant: he needed Muchami, but he, after all, was the owner of the lands they were discussing. Still, it was evident to Muchami (who never made this explicit) what Vairum knew and what he didn’t.

Since his return from Thiruchi, Vairum has set the tone clearly: he is the employer, Muchami answers to him, not his mother, and acts on his behalf, not hers. Vairum asks questions; Muchami answers them. He is to bring information to Vairum first.

Now he gives Muchami his orders. “Keep a close watch on my brother-in-law.”

Muchami wags his head sagely, his eyes on the bullock’s back.

“No one else is going to tell me what all he’s up to. I know he’s going to get into trouble and I want to know exactly how, when and what kind, preferably before he’s in too deep.”

Muchami raises his eyebrows, impressed. He has eavesdropped on conversations between college-educated men: they often seem incapable of learning anything except from books. Vairum, by contrast, may turn out to be a man he can respect. Muchami is comfortable with their dynamic, as it has settled out: though he never would have predicted it exactly, it feels natural and right. Even Sivakami appears to agree: she has taken care of these lands for her son, but they never belonged to her. She has to be glad that Vairum is willing to accept responsibility for what is his.

Muchami doesn’t even feel his relationship with Sivakami has much changed as a result: he still reports to her in matters of concern to family life, provided they aren’t of the sort he simply looks after on his own. In such matters—none have arisen in the months since Vairum’s return, but surely they will—he still might trust his own judgment above Vairum’s. Vairum is, after all, a young man, hot-headed and condemnatory, without, perhaps, the necessary subtlety and feeling for tradition that Muchami and Sivakami share.

As Thangam and Goli get settled in the government housing complex at Kulithalai, Muchami makes a point of dropping in daily. He almost always finds Thangam on the veranda, alone with the children, and offers to bring her back to her mother’s for a visit and a meal. She always accepts, and he returns her at dusk to a dark and empty house. Sivakami sends food back with her, which she always accepts, looking as vacant as her house does even months after they have moved in.

She has been shedding gold since her arrival, and people from Kulithalai and even from Cholapatti have taken to passing by their veranda with little squares of paper into which they scoop or brush these holiest of ashes, as Thangam sits there, alone or with the children. Sivakami had wondered if Thangam might ask to have the older girls come and live with her, or if they might ask, now that their parents are so close. But the girls take for granted that their home is with their grandmother, and Thangam and Goli don’t press for any changes to their arrangement.

She certainly didn’t feel as though Thangam could have handled having any more children at home with her. She has had few such chances to observe Thangam at length since she left to live with her husband, apart from times immediately before or after childbirth, when it’s not too surprising that a woman might be listless. Sivakami herself never was, but she knows such behaviour is not entirely abnormal. She does feel there is something not quite natural in the way Thangam relates to her children, though. Where is the adoration she herself felt? She remembers surprise at her abject fascination: is this how it was for her mother? Her mother said it was for the first two kids; with the third and fourth, she had less time to think about it. Maybe Thangam is overwhelmed by numbers: when her children crowd around her, competing for her attention, she gives it politely, but with a slight hesitation. Sivakami would even think distaste if that weren’t such a horrible notion. Thangam seems slightly afraid of her children, and far from enthralled.

They are all very good-looking children: fair, some with their father’s high, square forehead, some with Thangam’s shapely nose. Sivakami herself would have been proud to have borne them.
I thought my fate was to have a small family, but I have a large one after all.
Now all that remains is for Vairum to complete it, with children of his own.

GOLI’S PRIMARY ACTIVITY ON ARRIVAL appears to be that of using his position as a revenue inspector, which gives him access to the exact income levels and amenability to corruption of all of Kulithalai’s prominent citizens, as a springboard for his business schemes. For the first few months, he attempts to revive his proposal for a cigar and cigarette plant, and nearly succeeds, but one important backer with political ambitions withdraws late, and the idea falls through. Goli’s spirits are briefly dampened, but he rebounds with an imagined line of bottled cream sodas in innovative flavours. He convinces the would-be politician to invest—“No political liability in soda!”—and pays a dissolute young Britisher for market research and suggestions. The consultant advises Goli that for bestselling “Top Flavours!” drinks (a name Goli paid him a handsome bonus to invent), he can’t fail with vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Goli pays another huge sum to have essences imported from Italy and tries them, at an exclusive event, on half a dozen interested parties, all of whom concur that these exotic tastes are, if not repulsive, not exactly sure bets. No wonder newly arrived Britishers never like our food, if this is the kind of thing their tongues are trained on! They always come around, though, with time. A few of the men say they might consider going in on a line of coconut, mango and lime-flavoured drinks, but isn’t the market saturated?

“No one wants to turn him down flat,” Muchami reports to Vairum as they walk the fields together one morning, “because he’s the revenue inspector. It doesn’t do to get him mad: he might tax them at full percentages. Apart from which, there’s something about him people like. Even when they don’t give him money—and it’s amazing how often they do—they want to stay friends with him.”

Vairum listens in silence. Nearly every meeting he has had with Goli (always accidental, never planned) has ended in a row. These have been quick but unmistakable, and usually concerned Goli’s not living up to his responsibilities. There is something about the very sight of his brother-in-law that is, to Vairum, like a torch held to his tail.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t asked you to go in with him on something,” Muchami remarks to him, a surprisingly personal incursion.

“He has no access to my finances,” Vairum responds curtly, poking a fallen bunch of banana leaves out of a canal. “I told his supervisor right away that he cannot be impartial with me, and that I will show my books only to the higher-up. My brother-in-law has no idea what I might have to give, not that he would get a paisa out of me.”

Muchami nods and they walk on.

One day, when Muchami pays his call to Thangam, he finds Goli at home. This has happened only once before: it was a Sunday, Goli had just finished his mid-morning meal and went to take a nap, so Thangam clambered onto the cart with the children, as usual.

Today, however, is a Wednesday, and Muchami dares not ask why Goli is neither at the office nor out on calls.

“What do you want?” Goli asks him, from the door. Baby Sita, learning to walk, clings to her father’s legs, the only one of the children Muchami has seen take such a liberty with their father.

Muchami has removed his shoulder towel to bare his chest, as is proper for men of lower castes with Brahmins, and holds it at his waist as he speaks. “I was out on business and wondered if Thangam Amma would like to come to visit her mother.” He has never used the honorific for Thangam, who is more like a daughter than a mistress to him, but it would feel equally strange not to use it with Goli, and risk offending him.

“She’s there all the time,” Goli says. “She’s going to be staying home a little more from now on.”

Muchami is not sure how Goli knows Thangam’s whereabouts, since he is never at home when she leaves and returns. It’s hard to imagine him asking about her day or her volunteering the information. But he respectfully takes his leave, and drives away. He returns at four-thirty that afternoon, in case Thangam is alone by then and wants to come home briefly, but she is not on the veranda. He comes every morning for the next week. The door is always shut, the veranda vacant.

Sivakami is worried; Vairum demands that Muchami tell him what is happening, but Muchami can give them nothing, other than saying that Goli bragged to his wealthier friends that he was about to embark on an unprecedented scheme: guaranteed success, no overhead. He was sorry they could have no part in it, but it might have spinoff ventures, he had mused; they would just have to wait and see.